Saturday Morning Recipes (Lib #2)

This one has the recipes! 😎

Monday, July 4th, 2022

Dear Freedom Friends,

Here’s a question worth asking: who benefits most from the massive shift of adult women out of American homes and into the corporate/industrialized work force?

Not the children.

I grew up in the latch-key generation of kids born to women “recently liberated” from the tyranny of domesticity. We came home to empty houses, cold kitchens and rules. Lock the door. Don’t answer the door. Don’t answer the phone, either! Call 911 if someone tries to get into the house. Stay indoors, grab a snack & do your homework. Alone.

Once, when I was seven, some Mormon Missionaries came to the house and knocked on the door. They were dressed in black suits and I (being seven) decided they were mafia thugs intent upon robbing the house and murdering me. I slipped out the back door, climbed over five back yard fences, evaded one very aggressive dog, and fled to the one house in the neighborhood where a Mom stayed home. Her daughter’s name was Lisa and I remember they always had homemade cake for a treat after school. For a few years, I wanted to be named Lisa. I wonder why?

By the way. I got in trouble for fleeing to the neighbor’s house. I was seven. How is that fair? How is that good, natural or healthy? What human child was EVER left along, in the village, to wait for the entire tribe to return? None. There was always someone around, even if just the elders doing the baby sitting (and yeah, one of these days I’ll write about the insanity of modern grandparents living separately from their grandchildren).

Children need more nurturing than our “rat race culture” allots to them. Period.

One of the “gems” to come out of the Americana Women’s Lib Movement is the endlessly problematic concept of “Quality Time.” This article actually has some great ideas for balancing the modern lifestyle, BUT it begins and ends with shocking statements that boggle the imagination and seem designed to serve a “keep parents working” political ideology.

As a stay-at-home Mom, I’m calling her out on that BS (and…btw, you put the period inside the closing quotation marks).

I’ve spent 24 years wondering how women manage to raise their kids and work a full time job (plus the commute), and I’m wondering that because I was the Mom who was there for my kids (and all of their friends) day in and day out. Kids take time! Lots of it, and I absolutely had more time to give because I wasn’t giving my time to someone else for a paycheck.

This, of course, was a privilege as much as a choice. Not all mothers have the option, and I appreciate that this was a choice I could make, but at the same time, I am deeply frustrated by the perception that I wasn’t doing honest work. Worse. Apparently, I wasn’t working at all.

The other day, I overheard my 20 year old talking to his friend about his childhood. He said, “My Mom didn’t work, she just stayed home and raised us.”

I’m not mad at my son. I am completely unsurprised, actually, because this is THE deeply flawed perception that all women are now up against. From men. From bosses. From children. And most galling, from other women.

(1) We now live in a culture where the “work of the home” is so secondary to the work that brings in money that no one is even officially assigned the job.

(1.5) What then, does it say, that this work is instead mostly done by women, in 2-income households, as if it’s a mere second hand thought, while the men more typically rest from their labors?

(2) We have women struggling to compete against men in the work environment, while pregnant, nursing and typically being the primary emotional caregiver to their children at home.

(3) We have both parents juggling the demands of their job with the demands of their children, consistently feeling like failures because neither of them are there enough for the kids, and then the “experts” tell them that the time they DO spend with the kids isn’t enough. It has to be “quality” time.

(4) And, I can tell you from personal experience, that the women who work for the betterment of their family are either envied or looked oddly at by women who work for a paycheck, and no amount of volunteerism, community organizing or care-taking of other people’s kids will ever make up for the sin of being a “woman of leisure.”

Because, we don’t work, remember? And there’s the whole, laying around eating Bon-Bons thing, too.

(Huge. Fucking. Eye. Roll.)

I’m a work-aholic. I never stop going. Energizer Bunny and I are definitely related. While “raising my boys,” I ran four different businesses, washed dishes until my skin was raw, gardened until my back ached and my neck was thrown out, baked, cooked, managed every single doctor and dental visit (including 100% of the emergencies), homeschooled my kids, managed their 4-year competitive gymnastics experience, volunteered and participated and performed with my kids in the local Theater Group, raised hundreds of chickens, fed and managed vet visits for multiple dogs, a dozen pet rats, three cats, three horses and so on and so forth. Solar panels and roofing and house painting - check! Produce a local radio show? Check! Spent 500+ hours as Lead Area Caucus Coordinator for my island? Check! Refurbished kitchen (when the sink died, not by choice), carpet replaced (rescue dog with pee issues), and blah, blah, blah! The list could go on. You know the drill. But, hey. I didn’t work, in my son’s eyes, because my society says “it’s not work unless you get paid.”

Of course, this is mostly a middle class predicament. Poor women have almost always worked outside of the home. As wet nurses for rich women, house servants, scullery and milk maids, prostitutes, laborers on the farm or selling at market, musicians, circus performers, artisans, bakers, the list goes on.

Therefore, if the Americana Women’s Liberation Movement was making life better, shouldn’t we see (1) fewer women within lower economic classes leaving their kids at home to go to work and (2) those middle class women who feel like staying home to manage the complicated affairs of family life & community-building, feeling appreciated when they make that choice? Yes! But, we don’t.

We see ALL women being pressured into fueling the for-profit, endless-consumption, industrial machine. We aren’t working to get ahead. We are working so that we can fulfill our role as endless consumers.

The female sphere of influence & work — all incredibly important, hard and honorable work — has been reduced to nothing more than a perception of “grunt labor by ignorant women kept barefoot and pregnant.” There was no skill, nothing to admire, no reason to feel proud and certainly no sense of joy in a job well done. To be “all you could be” we told multiple generations of children (male and female alike) you must leave the children, the pets, the home and myriad domestic skills behind.

And for what? To enter the world of industrialization & out of control capitalism as a cog in an inhumane wheel that cares not whether you get chewed up in the gears along the way.

We were tricked, my dear friends, into becoming wage earners for an industry that then created a society that IS the very definition of “The Company Store.” You know, that place where you spend every penny you earn and have nothing left to show for a life spent slaving away for “the man.” We haven’t moved upward so much as sideways from the stereotype of the dismissive, arrogant, abusive and unappreciative husband to the same treatment from our boss. Of course, it’s much better now than it was during in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s…but we still don’t have enough enough time with our children. And, we still come home to a house that needs tending!

Then, the government/industrial schools demean parents, for failing their kids? Because, working parents clearly don’t care enough, don’t do enough, and it’s the fault of “the parents” that the kids can’t read? Maybe (this is actually being proposed) the government schools (who can’t teach your kid to read during the 40 hours a week they have control of your kid’s life) should have more rights over your children than you do?

Do you see how the slope is tilting and getting steeper and steeper and steeper?

Who thinks kids might benefit from riding home on the bus, after a long 8 hour day, knowing that a parent (either one, I don’t care) is actually tending the hearth? That the home, the kids, the garden, the pets and all the rest of it are worthy of care and are the primary province of someone’s attention? I DO.

It may seem small, but in truth, reclaiming the power of the home is HUGE. From food (natural ingredients, freshly harvested fruits and veggies, the skills of blending, stirring, chilling, baking, sauteing, braising, rising, rolling out crust and preserving the results of your labor) to the skill of sewing your child’s ripped pant leg or knitting them a scarf they will treasure for years to come…homemaking is a source of power that I (for one) am unwilling to relinquish.

When you look back on human history, what do you envision? I do not think of wars, empires, kings and conquest. I think of the incredible skills that people have leaned upon for eons. And much of it deals with food.

My Saturday Morning Recipes will often be an homage to kitchen wisdom that we would do well to intentionally not lose.

But, today, I’m also sharing my thoughts about how the industrialization of food may have actually created a cool outcome!

This recipe will prove that homemade brownies ABSOLUTELY CAN kick box brownie butt!

https://www.loveandlemons.com/brownies-recipe/

But, how did “box brownies” come to be any different than homemade brownies? I don’t know for sure, but I have a working theory. Traditional, homemade brownies often claim to be gooey, chewy and all that we’ve come to expect from box brownies. I’ve tried a few dozen recipes and never found it to be the case. They are always cakey, dry, crumbly or super dense. And I’m a good baker!

I’d sort of given up, but then I stumbled upon this recipe. OMG. And, what do you think the key ingredient is, that makes these brownies so perfectly box-ilicious? Corn Starch.

Specifically, the corn starch that’s present in powdered sugar, which this recipe calls for (in addition to normal sugar). And, what do you need in a box brownie product that’s going to sit on a shelf for weeks or months at a time? An anti-caking ingredient, so the mix comes out of the box ready to go. And what’s an anti-caking ingredient? Corn Starch!

It’s my theory that corn starch (either directly or within powdered sugar) was added to make the box brownie mix more shelf-stable and from this, we have been gifted the unexpected benefit of BOX BROWNIE CONSISTENCY!

My dear friends…go to the above link, and prepare to have your mind blown. Please do comment below, and share your homemade brownies cooked in your own kitchen experience! I’m super curious to hear how it goes!

And, of course, as a “homemade version” you can source the best oils (I use olive oil), the best eggs (from my own flock), the best flour (organic!), the best vanilla (I’ve got my own vodka soaking Madagascar beans), the best sugars (make sure the powdered sugar gets into the recipe and that it’s got corn starch in it - I think they all do?) and the best chocolate chips! Yummy, gooey, chewy and organic/free range/locally sourced/whatever you care about!

My time saving trick? Make 2-3 batches at once, then freeze them for “on the go” snacks! Also, I end up eating less when they’re in the chest freezer way out in the garage…than if they’re just sitting around getting stale and begging to be eaten.

Okay. A bit more on the healthy side, what exactly is a Garlic Snape? It’s the early flower stem, usually bent and definitely not blooming, of a garlic bulb. You want to snap it off, so the plant puts energy into the bulb (which you’ll harvest in late Spring).

What to do with it, though? Well, you can chop it up and throw it into a stir-fry or fresh into your salad or add to a soup, etc. But, at a recent “Freedom Friends” meeting, a lovely woman brought “Mint Roasted Garlic Snapes,” and I about died. Simple! Lay them on a cookie sheet, brush or drizzle with olive oil, sprinkle salt and finely chopped mint leaves, then roast until they are as done as you want them. YUM!

Perfect on their own, or toss on a salad, or maybe add to a bread and cheese platter? The garlic snapes are below, at the bottom of the photo, and a lot of people don’t know what to do with them — so if you don’t garden yourself, your gardening friends may be happy to share their snapes with you, in exchange for this recipe!

And, that’s me. For today. Be well. Respect your work. Even if no one pays you. One’s worth can never be adequately expressed with money. Remember that.